Question: “Why would any libertarian associate with Ygelasias, who calls them cruel sociopaths pretty much weekly?”
Maybe it’s because I’m charming. But more broadly, I think that when properly understood the “modern liberal” and “libertarian” offshoots of classical liberal thinking aren’t really all that different. There’s a broadly shared rational/secular/cosmopolitan outlook on the world that leads to convergence on a wide array of policy issues notwithstanding substantial disagreement on the appropriate scope of taxation and transfer payments in wealthy liberal democracies. Thanks to various quirks of American political and social history, liberals with different views on this issue tend to affiliate with rival political parties which is an interesting and important fact, but also a contingent one. In different countries the party systems are arranged differently, and different issues might be more salient. Indeed, I can imagine that during my lifetime we might reach a point where debates over the scope of the US welfare state cease to be at the forefront of political debates.